Wondered what had happened to Father and Mother. To Luet. To Elemak.

Someone was in the room. Someone was breathing.

"All better," said the voice. A whisper. Hard to identify. No, not hard. Elemak. "The Oversoul wins again."

Then the lights went out again and the door closed and he was alone.

Eiadh was singing softly to the little ones, Yista and Menya and Zhivya, when Protchnu came to her. She heard him come into the room, the door sliding open and then sliding dosed again behind him. She did not stop singing.

When the light returns again Will I remember how to see? Will I recognize my mother's face? Will she know me?

When the light returns again Then nothing will I fear; So I close my eyes and dream of day In darkness here.

"Singing is a waste of oxygen," said Protchnu softly.

"So is crying," Eiadh answered quietly. "Three children are not crying now because one person sang. If you came to stop my singing, go away. Report my crime to your father. Maybe he'll get angry enough to beat me. Maybe he'll let you help."

Still she didn't turn to look at him. She heard him breathing a little more heavily. Raggedly, perhaps. But she was surprised that when he spoke again, his voice was high with barely contained weeping. "It's not my feult you turned against Father."

She had been so stung by his repudiation of her in the library that she hadn't spoken to him since, and had avoided dunking of him, Protchnu, her eldest, saying such terrible things to his own mother. The boy had looked so savage at that moment, so much like Elemak, that she had felt as though she didn't know him. But she did know him, didn't she? He was only eight years old. It was wrong for him to have been torn between quarreling parents like this.

"I didn't turn against your father," she said softly. "I turned against what he's doing."

"Nafai cheated us."

"The Oversoul did. And all the parents of those children did. Not just Nafai."

Protchnu was silent. She thought maybe she had carried the point with him. But no, he was thinking of something else. "Do you love him?"

"I love your father, yes. But when he lets anger rule him, he does bad things. I reject those bad things."

"I didn't mean Father."

It was plain that he expected her to know already. That he had the idea somehow that she loved another man.

And, of course, she did. But it was a hopeless love and one that she had never, never shown to anyone.

"Whom did you mean, then?"

"Him."

"Say the name, Proya. Names aren't magic. It won't poison you to put the name on your lips,"

"Nafai."

"Uncle Nafai," she corrected. "Have respect for your elders."

"You love him."

"I would hope that I have a decent love for all my brothers-in-law, as I hope you will also love all your uncles. It would be nice if your father had a decent love for all his brothers. But perhaps you don't sec it that way. Look at Mcnya, lying there asleep. He is the fourth son in our family. He stands in relation to you as Nafai stands to your father. Tell me, Proya, are you planning someday to tie up little Menya and break his bones with a rod?"

Protchnu started to cry in earnest now. Relenting, Eiadh sat up and reached out for him, gathered him into her arms, pulling him down to sit beside her on the bed. "I'll never hurt Menya," he said. "I'll protect him and keep him safe."

"I know you will, Proya, I know it. And it's not the same thing between your father and Nafai. The difference in their ages is much greater. Nafai and Elya didn't have the same mother. And Elemak had a brother even older."

Protchnu's eyes opened wide. "I thought Father was the oldest."

"He's the oldest son of your grandfather Volemak. Back in the days when he was the Wetchik, in the land of Basilica. But Elemak's mother had other sons before she married Volemak. And the oldest of those was named Gaballufix."

"Does Father hate Uncle Nafai because he killed his brother Gaballufix?"

"They hated each other before that. And Gaballufix was trying to kill Nafai and your father and Issib and Meb."

"Why would he want to kill Issib?"

Eiadh noted with amusement that Protchnu didn't wonder why someone would want to kill his uncle Meb. "He wanted to rule Basilica, and the sons of the Wetchik stood in his way. Your grandfather was a very rich and powerful man, back in the land of Basilica."

"What does ‘rich' mean?"

What have I done to you, my poor child, that you don't even know what the word means? All wealth and grace have gone from life, and since you have seen nothing but poverty, even the words for the beautiful life are lost to you. "It means that you have more money than...."

But of course he didn't know what money meant, either.

"It means you have a more beautiful house than other people. A larger house, and fine clothing, many changes of clothing. And you go to better schools, with wiser teachers, and you have better food to eat, and more of it. All you could want, and more."

"But then you should share," said Protchnu. "You told me that if you have more than you need, you should share."

"And you do share. But... you won't understand, Proya. That kind of life is lost to us forever. You'll never understand it."

They were quiet for a few moments.

"Mother," said Protchnu.

"Yes?"

"You don't hate me because I chose Father? In the library that day?"

"Every mother knows there'll come a time when her sons will choose their father. It's a part of growing up. I never thought it would come to you so young, but that wasn't your fault."

A pause. Then his voice was very small indeed. "But I don't choose him."

"No, Protchnu, I didn't think you would ever really choose the bad things he's doing. You're not that kind of boy." In truth, though, Eiadh sometimes feared that he was that kind of boy. She had seen him playing, had seen him lording it over the other boys, teasing some of them cruelly, until they cried, and then laughing at them. It had frightened her, back on Harmony, to see her son be so unkind to those smaller than him. And yet she had also been proud of how he led the other boys in everything, how they all looked up to him, how even Aunt Rasa's Oykib stepped back and let Protchnu take the first place among the boys.

Can it ever be one without the other? The leadership without the lack of compassion? The pride without the cruelty?

"But of course you choose your father," said Eiadh. "The man you know he really is, the good, brave, strong man you love so much. That's the man you were choosing that day, I know it."

She could feel how Protchnu's body moved within her embrace as he steeled himself to say the hard thing. "He's really unhappy without you," he said.

"Did he send you to tell me that?"

"I sent myself," said Protchnu.

Or did the Oversoul send you? Eiadh wondered sometimes. Hadn't Luet said that they were all chosen by the Oversoul? That they were all unusually receptive to her promptings? Then why shouldn't one of her children have these extraordinary gifts, like the one that had popped up in Chveya, for instance?

"So your father in unhappy without me. Let him release Nafai, restore peace to the ship, and he won't have to be without me anymore."

"He can't stop," said Protchnu. "Not without help."

He's only eight years old? And he can see this deeply? Perhaps the crisis has awakened some hidden power of empathy within him. The Oversoul knows that at his age I was utterly witljout understanding or compassion for anyone. I was a moral wasteland, caring only for who was prettiest and who sang the best and who would be famous someday and who was rich. If I had only grown out of that childishness earlier, I might have seen which of the brothers was the better man, back before I married Elemak, back when Nafai was gazing at me with the calf eyes of adolescent love. I made a terrible mistake then. I looked at Elemak and couldn't see him without thinking, he's the heir of the Wetchik, oldest son of one of the richest and most prestigious men of Basilica. What was Nafai?